Diferent acces by app and web

Question

We have a user who, when accessing Teams via a browser, can see all the contacts he interacted with in the past. However, when using the desktop app, he only has access to the groups and is unable to perform any other actions. how can we fix it?

Answer 1

Hello Jimmy,

I’ve seen this kind of issue a few times — where Teams in the browser shows everything just fine, but the desktop app feels broken or limited (like missing contacts or not being able to do much besides view groups). It’s almost always related to a local cache problem or the app being a bit out of sync.

Here’s what usually fixes it:

What you could try is:

Fully close Teams and clear the cache This sounds basic, but it works surprisingly often. The desktop app stores a bunch of local files that can get corrupted or outdated.

First, completely quit Teams (right-click on the icon in the taskbar and hit “Quit”).

Then press Windows + R and paste this: %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams

Delete everything in that folder — don’t worry, it won’t remove your chats or teams, just local cache files.

Restart Teams and sign back in.

Make sure Teams is up to date Open Teams, click on your profile picture (top-right), then go to Settings → About Teams to check for updates. It should install updates automatically, but it sometimes gets stuck.

Log out and back in After clearing the cache, it helps to sign out completely and sign back in — just to force a full sync from the cloud.

Double-check the account Make sure the user is signed in with the correct account in both the browser and desktop app — especially if they have access to multiple tenants (work, guest, personal, etc.).

5. Reinstall Teams if all else fails If the above doesn’t work, uninstall Teams completely, delete the %appdata%\Microsoft\Teams folder again just to be safe, then reinstall the latest version from here:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/download-app

If it’s still not working after all that, it might be a sync issue tied to Azure AD or something odd in their profile — especially if this is happening only for one user and not company-wide.

Microsoft also has a basic cache clear guide here, in case you want to share it with the user:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/troubleshoot/teams-administration/clear-teams-cache

Let me know if you're in a managed environment with Intune or Conditional Access policies — sometimes they can cause weird app behavior too.